The staff here at NobodyisFlyingthePlane is, like most, fatigued by news of mass shootings. Going forward we are going to try to focus on solutions oriented posts.

Kristof’s piece, linked below, poses the conversation as one of public health not politics. Many of his points resonated in that context. He uses the auto as a way of looking at it. Much of what we have done to reduce harm from cars can be applied to guns.

only in the U.S. do we lose one person every 15 minutes to gun violence.

I suggest that we try a new approach to reducing gun violence – a public health strategy.

We don’t ban cars, but we work hard to regulate them – and limit access to them – so as to reduce the death toll they cause. This has been spectacularly successful, reducing the death rate per 100 million miles driven by 95 percent since 1921.

The evidence is overwhelming that overall more guns and more relaxed gun laws lead to more violent deaths and injuries.

As we often say here: people are terrible judges of risk. We fear terrorism and mass shootings, but we’re far more likely to be killed by having a gun in the home.

although it is mass shootings that get our attention, they are not the main cause of loss of life.

Much more typical is a friend who shoots another, a husband who kills his wife – or, most common of all, a man who kills himself.

For skeptics who think that gun laws don’t make a difference, consider what happened in two states, Missouri and Connecticut. In 1995, Connecticut tightened licensing laws, while in 2007 Missouri eased gun laws.

Yet our laws have often focused more on weapons themselves (such as the assault weapons ban) rather than on access. In many places, there is more rigorous screening of people who want to adopt dogs than of people who want to purchase firearms.

In these two states, the laws affected access, and although there’s some indication that other factors were also involved in Connecticut (and correlations don’t prove causation), the outcomes are worth pondering.

This is the new colonialism. Western corporations are forcing their junk food down the collective throats of the developing world.

The story is as much abouteconomicsas it is nutrition. As multinational companies push deeper into the developing world, they are transforming local agriculture, spurring farmers to abandon subsistence crops in favor of cash commodities like sugar cane, corn and soybeans — the building blocks for many industrial food products. It is this economic ecosystem that pulls in mom-and-pop stores, big box retailers, food manufacturers and distributors, and small vendors

The new reality is captured by a single, stark fact: Across the world, more people are now obese than underweight. At the same time, scientists say, the growing availability of high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods is generating a new type of malnutrition, one in which a growing number of people are both overweight and undernourished.

The larger question is why we allow the chemical industry — by spending $100,000 on lobbying per member of Congress — to buy its way out of effective regulation of endocrine disruptors. The industry’s deceit marks a replay of Big Tobacco’s battle against regulation of smoking.

Originally the staff here at NobodyisFlyingthePlane was against this tax. We looked at it from the perspective of City needing to focus energy on far greater problems. We came around this year when municipalities tried again.

Even if the money is not earmarked for health issues it does seem to have positive effects. More impact full was our realization that this could b a new way to punish corporations for harmful behavior and products. At least it may disincentivize products which do more harm than good.

It’s always heart warming to see a company that profits by poisoning people take one on the chin.

Could we come up with local taxes on coal companies and other polluters?

Big Meat like so many others is an abhorrent business.Not only is their methods of processing meat criminally disgusting, their political behavior is illegally self serving.

They just keep writing rules to favor their unsanitary practices.

With the government working hand in hand with business, the only remaining window into the food system is the lens of an activist’s camera.

They keep finding ways to remove over site whether it’s U.S.D.A. or activists. They just don’t want anyone to to see how meat is manufactured because they know it would kill their sales

Remember Eric Schlosser’s defining comment from Fast Food Nation about why the meat industry makes its consumers sick,”there is shit in the meat”.

Wolf told me that the industry response over the last decade has made him think hard about the limits of undercover videos. While the camera may expose inhumane or unappetizing actions at a place like Quality Pork Processors, it doesn’t capture the corporate higher-up who demanded increased production, the industrial engineer who came up with a work flow to make it happen, the union boss who approved the speedup or the floor supervisor who berates workers who fail to keep pace. The hidden cameras carried by undercover investigators provide our only view onto the meatpacking industry, but they are a pinhole, not a panorama.

Most staff here think the better question really is what is wrong with Republicans?

Preventing disease is a non partisan need. Why must our feckless national leaders use this as an opportunity to push it’s anti-women Healthcare agendas?

Republican lawmakers attached so many objectionable provisions to the measure that Democrats have effectively blocked the bill in the Senate
Another troubling aspect of the bill is that, to offset costs, it would rob other important programs of about $750 million; funding for Ebola, for example, would be cut by $107 million. The bill would also relax environmental laws by allowing businesses to spray pesticide near lakes, rivers and other waterways without notifying the Environmental Protection Agency. Republicans say this would make it easier for local governments to control mosquitoes — even though the law on pesticide spraying already has an exception for health emergencies.